ebooks Archives | Page 5 of 7 | American Libraries Magazine

Making Progress in Digital Content

By George Gottschalk | July 1, 2015

What does an ebooks marketplace look like if, in addition to libraries, content providers are equally committed to a sustainable ecosystem that enables viability for all players—publishers, vendors, authors, libraries and, of course, readers? It looks a great deal like the session “Making Progress in Digital Content” that took place at the 2015 ALA Annual Conference, … Continue reading Making Progress in Digital Content →

Apps for That

By Phil Morehart | June 22, 2015

Search Axis with Boopsie Boopsie, a mobile platform-as-a-service provider for more than 4,000 libraries worldwide, has joined forces with digital content, print book, and entertainment product distributor Baker & Taylor to simplify searching for and finding a library’s e-content. The Boopsie mobile app is now integrated with Baker & Taylor’s Axis 360 digital media library. … Continue reading Apps for That →

Ebook price discrepancy, as tweeted by Edmonton Public Library, @EPLdotCA

Canada, oh Canada: Fighting back on ebook pricing

By James LaRue | June 18, 2015

Our Canadian librarian colleagues are telling the world: Big publishers are ripping us off, big time. If you’re one of the Big Five publishers, this is the conversation you do not want to have. You have a product—the ebook file representing a book—and you insist that it be treated like a book in some ways. … Continue reading Canada, oh Canada: Fighting back on ebook pricing →

Empowering Libraries to Innovate

By Larra Clark | June 18, 2015

At the same time, ALA and libraries have been exploring additional options for empowering our users to discover and publish digital content, considering privacy and preservation concerns, and expanding the lens of focus to other forms of digital content. The most recent round of John S. and James L. Knight Foundation challenge grants intersects in … Continue reading Empowering Libraries to Innovate →

Toward the Post-Privacy Library?

By Eric Hellman | June 16, 2015

Noticing this, a librarian calls up some local merchants and tells them that Alice might be pregnant. When Alice visits her local bookstore, the staff has some great suggestions about newborn care for her. The local drugstore sends her coupons for scent-free skin lotion. She reads What to Expect When You’re Expecting at the library, … Continue reading Toward the Post-Privacy Library? →

DCL Ebook Report, June 2015

By Robert C. Maier | June 4, 2015

In the world according to Amazon, adult coloring books take four of the top 20 spots! Most readers of this blog are probably way ahead of me in the world of adult coloring, but I have to admit that my mind wandered a bit. Just how adult are these coloring books? If your mind is … Continue reading DCL Ebook Report, June 2015 →

Click, Click, Read

By James English and Micah May | June 4, 2015

Then, before reading, what if users had to navigate a complex registration process that could take well over an hour and create user accounts with the for-profit providers, who then try to sell them books while they browse for something to borrow? While some libraries have outsourced library services to private contractors, this approach has … Continue reading Click, Click, Read →

Amazon Squeezes Publishers

By James LaRue | June 3, 2015

In part, that means that we’ve started to pay attention to the many, many midlist or indie presses that have started drastically boosting their output. We also have started (and it’s about time) to more closely track the many new players of an emerging ecosystem of publishing, not just here, but abroad. A case in … Continue reading Amazon Squeezes Publishers →

Building Out the Book Niches

By Shannon Okey | June 3, 2015

When collection budgets are squeezed and shelf space is at a premium, digital collection assets can shine … assuming they’re available and affordable. Librarian Jessamyn West wrote at librarian.net in a 2012 article “Let’s Be Honest about the Ebook Situation” that several large publishers, including Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Book Group, refused to sell … Continue reading Building Out the Book Niches →

ALA’s DCWG, Ebooks, and Directions

By Carolyn Anthony | May 27, 2015

Two issues came to the fore in the fall. Adobe Digital Editions experienced a privacy breach that led to unencrypted personal information being transmitted online. DCWG responded, and the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) and ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) assisted with technical and policy advice. Adobe took quick action to address the … Continue reading ALA’s DCWG, Ebooks, and Directions →

DCL Ebook Report, May 2015

By Robert C. Maier | May 6, 2015

The Douglas County Libraries Pricing Comparison for May (PDF file) shows a continuing trend with library ebook prices running at an average of 4.6 times the consumer price. Also worthy of note is the fact that all 30 titles listed are available as ebooks to libraries through both 3M and OverDrive. This month’s comparison is … Continue reading DCL Ebook Report, May 2015 →

Publishers, Distributors, and Consortia

Robert C. Maier | April 22, 2015

Among the Big Five, only Hachette Book Group does not offer public libraries the opportunity to license its ebooks through consortia. Hachette says it evaluates each consortium on a case-by-case basis “using criteria including number of libraries, size of population, and circulation numbers.” Some consortia have been approved. The other publishers say they license to … Continue reading Publishers, Distributors, and Consortia →

Latest Library Links

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The British scientist Alan Turing’s Princeton doctoral degree, OBE medal, and other items of memorabilia have been recovered in Colorado, 35 years after they were taken from Sherborne School in the UK. On January 17, federal officials said they had recovered and were seeking the forfeiture of Turing’s items, reports, and letters from his time at boarding school. The items were stolen in 1984, the filing said, after a woman asked to see the Turing archive at Sherborne. In 2018 a woman named Julia Turing (originally Schwinghamer) offered the items on loan to the University of Colorado Boulder, after which federal officials searched a home and recovered the items.
The Guardian (UK), Jan. 21
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Alan Inouye writes: “A tsunami hit the publisher-library ecosystem in the last half of 2019. Macmillan Publishers decided that a library system (whether in a town of a few hundred people or the Los Angeles Public Library) may purchase only one copy of a new ebook until the ninth week after release. Libraries and their communities vigorously opposed this new policy through a wave of letters to the company, op-eds, articles, TV news appearances, radio interviews, panel sessions, and a national petition. Communities lose when ebook sales to libraries are denied or delayed, especially people with low or fixed income and, disproportionately, people of color.”
ITI Newslink, Jan. 21
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In 1763, a mob of white settlers, the so-called “Paxton Boys,” murdered 20 unarmed Conestoga People in a genocidal campaign that reshaped Pennsylvania settlement politics. The Library Company of Philadelphia has published a graphic novel about the event, Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga, by Lee Francis 4, with art by Weshoyot Alvitre, and edited by Will Fenton, and is now hosting an exhibition on view at the library through April 10. The exhibition features Alvitre’s hand-painted artwork from the graphic novel, a wampum belt created by Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James-Perry, and a behind-the-scenes documentary.
Library Company of Philadelphia
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Unexpectedly finding a skeleton lounging in her office doesn’t rattle Beth M. Lander, college librarian at the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. “That’s an excellent example of what it is like to work here,” she says. “You never know what might happen next.” The college shares its library with the Mütter Museum, an institution known for its macabre medical materials, which span centuries. The library holds more than 146,000 journals, monographs, photos, manuscripts, and other medical ephemera documenting more than 1,000 years of medical history. It also has five books bound in human skin.
American Libraries Bookend, Jan./Feb.
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The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the world’s preeminent center for the study of the Yiddish language, culture, and history, has laid off all of its librarians. Four people were let go in the move, which was announced internally last week and confirmed by Executive Director Jonathan Brent in a statement on January 20. The four librarians were among 39 total employees of the 95-year-old organization, which reported $5.1 million in spending in its 2018 annual report. YIVO had a $550,000 revenue shortfall in 2019, Brent said, so the board and professional leadership decided to remove the librarians in order to “seek efficiencies in the organization.”
Forward, Jan. 20
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The Digital Public Library of America has released a new ebook, The Impeachment Papers, a compendium of 38 documents related to the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. The EPUB-format ebook consists of witness testimony, subpoenas, and other publicly available material in an easy-to-read format. Additions to the preliminary version of this ebook, originally released in December, include the report from the House Judiciary Committee, report from the House Intelligence Committee, and the review of four FISA applications and other aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, all of which were released to the public in December. A browser version is also available.
Digital Public Library of America, Jan. 21
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Clark Drieshen writes: “The British Library invites you to explore some of the wildlife that can be found in its heraldic manuscripts. Medieval and early modern coats of arms—visual designs symbolizing the heritage of individuals and families—are teeming with animal life. These animals are depicted according to heraldic conventions, but sometimes they also display fabulous features originating from medieval illustrated bestiaries. It can sometimes be difficult to understand what these borrowings from the bestiary tradition represent. Luckily, we have a guidebook at our disposal, namely the 15th-century Middle Scots Deidis of Armorie.”
British Library: Medieval Manuscripts Blog, Jan. 21

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